Peering Down The Tunnel Beyond Death -- Globe And Mail
Hollywood favours, for simplicity's sake, the instant flat-line death; the hero gasps a brilliant line, his eyes dim and he's gone. But in real life, dying has more drama. The heart and lungs quit, the blood, carrying its life-giving oxygen, stops flowing and the brain, without its generator, chugs to a standstill. Abandoned in the dark, the cells take their last stand, firing off chemicals like distress flares. When no rescue comes, they begin to suffocate one by one. The cell membranes rupture, spilling out the insides. Or they implode.
Yet now and then there is Hollywood-style rescue: The heart is kick-started back to life, blood pumps, the brain sucks in oxygen in time to save itself. We've all heard the stories of people who return from the edge of death: bright tunnels, visions of dead relatives and, most logic-defying of all, floating above themselves watching the doctors trying to save them.
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